After Lydia closed the front door, she went to the armoire and pulled out the plastic bag, pipe, and lighter. She turned the ancient heater higher, but she was still cold, so she went back into the living room and pulled out a blanket from inside the armoire. In the bathroom, she piled towels on the fuzzy mat, sat on top, and wrapped the blanket around herself. She didn’t feel anything with the first rock, so she smoked another, and then another until her supply was gone. But she wasn’t frightened. Her sister had left the money on the table and Mrs. Bradley was coming the next day, so Lydia could fit her for a dress.
She lay back against the tub. She felt so nice but was annoyed that she’d left the cassette player on. She didn’t remember turning it on. Something with drums was playing, and it kept running past the same loop. She got up, stumbling, and went into the living room, but she was wrong. The cassette player was unplugged, and now somebody was knocking at the door and they wouldn’t stop. Calling her name, and she walked to the door, reminding herself, don’t be rude to Mrs. Bradley. You couldn’t yell at an old lady, not if you had home training.
When Lydia opened the door, there was a woman standing there in a ragged dress. And so much hair, well past her knees. How did somebody fix all that? Lydia didn’t even want to think about this lady’s complicated wash day.
“Yes, ma’am. May I help you?”
The long-haired lady didn’t answer, she just took Lydia’s hand. She led her to the staircase; Lydia looked down. Below her on the steps, she saw her great-grandmother, but Dear Pearl wasn’t carrying her cane. She was young and her hair was black and pulled into a bun. She wore a yellow dress with buttons down the front and yellow shoes to match. Dear Pearl shimmied in the dress, giggling. She said she’d sewn this on her hands, and wasn’t she looking fine?
At the bottom of the staircase, there was Dante in church clothes, saying, hey, baby, I missed you, and Lydia gave a cry. Her husband put his hand on the shoulder of her father, who had on his doctor’s scrubs. Daddy waved at her, apologizing. He was sorry that he’d left so suddenly. But he was here because he’d missed Lydia so much. He’d come back to get his darling girl.
VIII
. . . need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the veil?
—W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
Keeping the Tune
My mother didn’t feel it when her child died. There was no dream, no prescience in her spirit, and when the police informed her that a woman named Irma Bradley had found Lydia at the bottom of the stairs of the apartment building where she’d been living, the surprise hit my mother so hard that she fainted.
Lydia hadn’t died from the fall down the steps, but from the series of seizures from the cocaine in her system, which had moved her into a short coma before her heart had stopped. Coco would explain that to us, after she went to the hospital and identified our sister’s body. Lydia had kept a card in her bra with our parents’ address, number, and names printed neatly on it. At some point, she had added my name beneath theirs in red ink: And my youngest sister, Ailey Pearl Garfield.
It was a spring morning when Lydia passed away, a morning that I was sleeping in. I didn’t have volunteer work at the clinic, but I was planning to see my sister later in the day. I was sleep-logged, and when I came down the stairs, I was disappointed I didn’t smell coffee. Then I saw my mother’s head on my aunt’s shoulder; her eyes were closed. I joked that the both of them were goofing off so early in the day, but my aunt shook her head.
“Darling, it’s Lydia. She’s gone, Ailey. She passed away.”
I made a loud cry, and my aunt put her finger to her lips. She shook her head again and pointed at my mother. Not now. When we half carried Mama upstairs, she awoke, and I supported her while Aunt Diane pulled off her clothes, dropping them into a pillowcase. I held Mama steady as my aunt tugged a fresh nightgown over her head. Before she fell back asleep, Mama promised me she would be better tomorrow. Her voice was faint. She shuddered between words.
*
No mother expects to bury her child, and there was no funeral policy for Lydia, the daughter everyone had prayed would get better. Coco told me she’d solicited donations to bury our sister. It happened quietly, she said. Our Chicasetta relatives called each other behind Mama’s back, and that collection paid for shipping the body down south. The pink casket, the flowers, and the repast. The gravestone, though no plot had to be purchased. Lydia would be buried in the old cemetery out on the farm, on the left side of our father’s grave.